Anyone who has looked at modern football and muttered ‘the game’s gone’ has a point. Nothing confirms this belief more than the obscene amounts of money and the hypocrisy surrounding the drawn out transfer saga of Newcastle United’s Alexander Isak.
Liverpool fans think Newcastle are behaving badly by not selling them their best player, yet it was only a few months ago they were booing Trent Alexander-Arnold
For those just catching up, the Swedish striker wants to leave Newcastle. Not surprisingly for someone who regularly scores 20 plus goals a season and helped the Geordies to their first trophy win in 70 years last season, they do not want him to go and have slapped an eye-watering £150 million asking price on his head.
As a result, Isak has refused to train or play for the side who pays his not inconsiderable wages. He wants to go to Liverpool (the club Newcastle beat to win whatever the League Cup is called these days) earlier this year.
There are several ways to look at this situation and none of them are good. He’s behaving like a petulant child, still drawing the kind of salary fans can only dream of while Liverpool’s opening bid of £110 million was dismissed as derisory by Newcastle, even though it would make Isak among the most expensive players in the world.
Liverpool fans think Newcastle are behaving badly by not selling them their best player, yet it was only a few months ago they were booing Trent Alexander-Arnold for refusing to sign a new contract ahead of a cut-price move to Real Madrid. Newcastle think Liverpool are behaving badly by making their intentions so blatantly obvious that Isak has gone on strike. And pretty much everyone thinks Isak is behaving worst of all.
The hypocrisy in football is nothing new and the Isak saga has once more highlighted it. Liverpool fans criticising Alexander-Arnold for having his head turned by a transfer to Real Madrid seem quite happy for their own club to do the same to Isak.
And this isn’t the first time. Back in 2008, Liverpool tried to sign Lucas Neill on a free from Blackburn Rovers but West Ham hijacked the deal by offering him more money. Liverpool’s fans called the player ‘Lucash Neill’. They moaned when Arsenal tried to sign Luis Suarez by a penny over his release clause price and hyperventilated over Chelsea’s attempts to sign Steven Gerrard, though were quite happy when they nicked Fernando Torres off them.
Newcastle are not immune to a bit of hypocrisy themselves at the moment, asking £150 million for Isak but offering just £35 million for Brentford’s Yoane Wissa who scored 20 goals for his club last season. In other words, treating Brentford the same way Liverpool are treating them.
While Isak is behaving like Violet Elizabeth Bott from Just William and alienating the supporters of his club, there are other reasons why Newcastle should hold firm. By joining the Anfield club he would make Liverpool stronger and Newcastle weaker, while Alexander-Arnold going to Spain will not dent their chances of winning the league.
It’s a common tactic. Manchester United used to regularly strengthen their team during their dominant years by buying the best players from other clubs with varying degrees of success. They took Van Persie from Arsenal, Cantona from Leeds (just after Leeds had won the title), Carrick, Sheringham and Berbatov from Spurs, and so on.
On top of all this, Liverpool’s start to the season makes one wonder if it’s a striker they really need more than a couple of decent defenders. They seem to have no problem scoring goals but lots of problems conceding them. In both their first two games they have let slip a two goal lead before coming back to win, first against Bournemouth and then, ironically, against Newcastle.
They still have the remarkable Salah, and Isak would be seen as his eventual successor and a better bet than the newly departed Darwin Nunez – Darwin never evolved into the all out goalscorer they’d hoped for. But their defence is looking shaky without Trent Alexander-Arnold. Perhaps they should try and poach someone like, ooh let’s say Dan Burn…from Newcastle.
If there’s one thing this football farrago has confirmed is that Financial Fair Play has done nothing to stop the big clubs getting bigger and the small clubs getting smaller, that fans are hypocrites if they think their side are any more virtuous than anyone else – and that having a transfer window continuing after the season has started is both disruptive and distracting.
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